1. Fields of the Invention
Beverage container lids, hot beverage container lid, container lid spout, temperature sensing devices, smell, sight and taste enhancing media, container rims, moveable hatches.
2. Description of the Background Art
Disposable beverage lids and cups have been around for a very long time. The first widely used disposable cup was made of paper. The weight and thickness of the material varied with the type and temperature of the beverage to be contained in the cup. Later on, and due to the popularity and high volume output of the fast-food industry, the need for hot-beverage cups with lids became evident. The inception of drive-up window service usually associated with the fast-food industry made the safe containment of hot beverages an ever-pressing requirement.
A more recent phenomenon, causing a different demand for lids and cups, is the worldwide proliferation of the gourmet coffee café. These cafes serve exotic varieties of rich, hot coffee at an approximate cost of about $13.00 per gallon—nearly nine times the cost of premium gasoline. The demand for hot coffee served by these gourmet cafes has been very healthy and continues to be so in a growing market. However, there has not been much, if any, significant improvement in the container, i.e., the lid and cup, from the standpoint of the consumer's ability to manipulate and handle the container, and of the consumer's enhancement of pleasure derived from the consumption.
The predominant gourmet hot coffee cup is a paper cup sufficiently resistant to adequately contain coffee. The cup maintains its shape and structural integrity more effectively with a lid firmly placed and held on the top of the cup. The server usually places the lid on the cup after the coffee is poured into the cup. The lid and cup combination is a container that is stronger than the individual strengths of the separated components. The newest paper cups, with a plastic lid press-fitted in place creates an adequately strong container. The cup wall without the lid tends to deform under the grasp of a human hand.
The consumer then takes the hot cup of coffee to a condiment counter where the lid is removed to facilitate the addition of condiments, usually cream and/or sugar. The lid is usually set on the condiment counter while the consumer uses both hands to add condiments and stir them into the coffee. The consumer then generally replaces the lid and drinks the coffee. Some consumers throw the lid away in order to enjoy the aroma, taste, color, motion and temperature of the coffee, and to remove the cumbersome lid.
The existing lids have a small drinking hole on the perimeter of the lid allowing the consumer to drink and taste the coffee. The size and orientation of the drinking hole causes the lid drinking rim thickness, relative to the rim diameter, to be wider than what consumers are accustomed to when drinking from cups, either disposable without the lid or permanent, or mugs. This rim width and curvature influences the mouth to conform to a shape significantly different from the more normal shape of the mouth when drinking from a common cup without a lid or from a mug. This effect on the mouth is compounded by the upper surface of the common lid contacting the tip of the nose almost immediately upon tipping the cup for drinking. This untimely contact between nose and lid forces the head back to allow pouring of the beverage. This is not the case when drinking from a normal cup without a lid or from a mug because the nose can pass through the top plane of the cup or mug opening in the absence of a cup lid.
Taste and to some degree touch are the only senses that existing coffee lids allow the consumer to experience and enjoy. Touch, to sense the temperature of the contents, is experienced through the manual feeling of the temperature through the cup walls, and by contact between the lips and the plastic surface of the lid. Taste, by itself, without the compounded affect of multiple sensory responses, lowers the single sense affect. The limited touch sensing of the hot beverage temperature misrepresents the true temperature of the hot beverage until it pours out through the lid onto the tongue. The insulating effect of the plastic wall of the lid, and the shape and orientation of the spout in the commonly used lids, deprives the consumer of optimal taste and touch sensing.
Commonly used lids pour the hot beverage further back into the mouth and onto the tongue too quickly, thereby depriving the drinker of timely anticipation of taste and temperature by the maximum number of taste buds and nerve endings located from the very front to the back of the mouth. When multiple senses are simultaneously stimulated, the sensory response of each sense is greater than the sense being stimulated alone. When physical interruptions and obstructions to a normal sensory experience exist, so do distractions from the normal enjoyment of the experience. Its seems wasteful to drink a cup of expensive coffee, carefully selected, roasted, brewed, rich, hot and aromatic, covered with an inefficient lid which makes the experience clumsy and not very enjoyable.
Existing coffee lids are opaque and, except for the spout and a very tiny air vent hole, are vapor and liquid sealed. The old saying—I wish coffee tastes as good as it smells—begs the question—why should such a simple plastic lid deprive the consumer of the very important sense of smell which would enhance the enjoyment of a good cup of coffee? The same question applies to the senses of sight and touch, thus offering a potentially simple solution to several simple problems.
There are two other problems with state of the art lids that are unrelated to the sensory issues. Removal of the lid to add and stir in condiments, while solving one problem, causes another in that the coffee cup walls become weaker and tend to flatten in the grasp of a hand. A cup without a lid allows the contents—in this case, hot coffee—to cool faster, which is undesirable. A cup without a lid is potentially unsafe in the pedestrian and vehicular travel modes. The desire to not replace the lid usually overrides the physical practicality and safety aspects of replacing the lid unless the consumer is traveling while drinking in which case sensory response is sacrificed for safe and effective containment of the beverage.
The opaqueness of the state of the art lid also deprives the consumer of seeing the color and level of the coffee in the cup. Sight in and of itself does not stimulate a pleasure response because while drinking, one cannot see the coffee even when drinking from an open cup. To see the coffee just prior to drinking has a positive effect because the drinker sees the movement and color of the coffee in the cup. This effect causes the consumer to anticipate the taste, smell and temperature of the coffee, and to not be distracted by the uncertainty of when and at what flow rate the coffee will reach the spout. The elimination of these sensory obstacles with the addition of elements that facilitate sensory perception allow the consumer enhanced enjoyment of a gourmet cup of coffee.
3. Summary of the Invention
It is an object of the invention disclosed herein to provide a beverage cup lid comprising a combination of elements to simultaneously enhance the sensory responses of taste, smell, touch and sight during drinking with the beverage cup lid in place. The sensory elements comprise openings, transparent materials, shape and media through which liquid and vapor can pass, and through which heat can conduct or convect. The media comprise: perforations, screens, membranes, fabrics, baffles or any systematic or random presence or arrangement of materials or lack thereof that passively blocks, impedes or controls the flow of liquid or vapor.
It is another object of this invention to provide a beverage cup lid comprising a physical element that allows the addition and stirring of condiments while the lid is fully installed on the cup. The physical element comprises a transparent hatch section of the lid that is hinged, by impressing or stamping the lid material, allowing the hatch to open by manipulation with a common stirring stick causing physical access to the contents for the addition and stirring of condiments. Then upon completion and removal of the stirring stick, the hinged hatch plastically recovers to its closed position.
The invention disclosed herein integrates the following elements of a press and lock on beverage cup lid: a spout, of a shape and location on the lid, for effective contact between the discharging liquid and the inside of the upper lip; a taste and temperature sensing enhancing means allowing capillary attraction of liquid through an area of the lid opposite the spout where the lid comes into contact with the upper surface of the front of the tongue; olfactory enhancing means allowing passage of vapors through an area of the lid in the proximity of where the nostrils would be during drinking; a rim, of a shape, height and curvature that replicates the rim of a normal cup, surrounding a transparent section of the lid acting as a window for visual access to the cup's contents; and a hatch which is a hinged moveable portion of the transparent section of the lid for physical access to the cup's contents. Each of these elements is described in greater detail as follows:
Spout: the spout can be an opening cut into the lid material to allow a beverage discharge flow rate, for drinking, equivalent to that of a cup without a lid. The shape of the spout allows early contact between the forward surface of the upper lip, pouring of the contents into the mouth and draining back into the cup to prevent pooling of the contents in the top of the lid.
Taste and Temperature Sensing Enhancing Means: located in the tipped forward nearly upright drinking position of the lid and cup, where the tongue contacts the lid behind the spout, to facilitate controlled passage of a liquid. The taste and temperature sensing enhancing means is contained within a circular area or could be of any logical shape such as the upper surface of the front of the tongue. This element's properties, in relation to the surface tension of the contained beverage, blocks or impedes flow or seepage of the beverage until contact between it and the tongue as the cup and lid are tipped backward. The contact causes capillary action on the liquid that, then passes in minute amounts, through the taste and temperature sensing enhancing means and then on to the taste buds, and temperature sensing nerve endings on the upper surface of the front of the tongue.
Olfactory Enhancing Means: located around the forward half of the inside surface of the rim of the lid and usually comprising a band of perforations. These olfactory enhancing means can, be any other logical shape, location or size that effectively allow the passage of vapor, and are usually located around the position of the drinker's nostrils in the drinking mode of the cup and lid. The properties of the olfactory enhancing means in relation to the surface tension and vaporization of the contained beverage, allow beverage vapors to pass through it but impede or blocks leakage of liquid beverage.
Window: the inner circular area of the lid is a transparent window allowing visibility to the contents of the cup. This inner circular area is sloped downward from its diameter, where a hinge is impressed or stamped into the material. The sloped semicircular shaped sections of this area form a pitch for back drainage of any liquid that leaks above the lid. The semicircular section closest to the spout is fixed to the bottom of the rim of the lid along its inner circumference and it is this area that is stationary.
Hatch: is the other half of the transparent inner circular area. The hatch, remains attached along the diameter that is impressed or stamped to act as a plastic hinge. This half when pushed downward, with a common stirring stick, while the cup and lid are in the standing upright position opens this semicircular section of the lid. Manipulation of the stirring stick holds the movable half-downward to allow addition and stirring of condiments into the beverage without removal of the lid. Removal of the stirring stick allows the movable half of the circular section to return to the closed position.